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Brighter Light Participants : a technical note

Hi, it’s Ina. Several people have run into issues with our Notice Board. I’m currently trying figure out what can be fixed and what is just a problem, so I wanted to pass on the information I do have (this reminds me of a joke my programmer husband says used to make the rounds at a company he once worked for: if a program has an unfixable bug, just call it a “feature” and sell the program anyhow).

So here is what I have so far:

1) If the Notice Board suddenly started asking you to register before you can post anything, I think I’ve fixed it. It should let you post/comment again without registering. If you see any comments from a “Felicity Test” that’s me, testing out the fix.

2) Charmingly, it looks like you can edit your posts/poems right up until someone comments. So if, for example, someone posts a comment about your poem that suggests an interesting or useful change, the Notice Board promptly stops letting you do anything to your post – like input that interesting or useful change. Sigh. (It’s not a bug! It’s a feature!). I have been banging my head against the walls of any forum I can find about how to fix this problem with no success. So…as a work-around, Andrea has graciously offered to use your latest version of a poem, even if you can’t delete the earlier one. If you post a re-written poem and your earlier version can’t be deleted, please:

indicate which poem is the latest version (the version you want to enter in the contest)

indicate the prompt to which it is a response

That way Andrea will consider the poem you want her to.

If I make any further changes, I’ll keep you-all posted. I will also make sure that we don’t make any changes that will prevent you from accessing your poems and comments. If you run into any more technical problems, please drop me a line through the “Contact Us” link and I’ll do my best to fix it fast!
~ Ina

Hi Ina and Andrea, I just wanted you to know that your fixes worked and I could post my poems without having to register. Thanks!

Also, I just want to take a moment and say ‘Thank you’ to Andrea and Ina for hosting this wonderful adult/kid poetry challenge. It was a wonderful insight and sometimes a confirmation into how my daughter’s minds work. We started off with all three of us trying to write something for the prompt and then I would edit/meld/mesh our results into something hopefully worthy of the prompt. I did hit a glitch in the second prompt, the reindeer in glass, they both wrote such wonderful but different poems, that when I edited them they simply had to become part 1 and part 2. As the prompts went on and we became so overwhelmingly busy, I would show them a picture or tell them the prompt and say, “now give me some words that come to mind when you see/hear this”. It was wonderful. Sometimes they were on the same wavelength and I would get almost the exact same words from both of them (I always asked them separately so they would not be influenced by the other). Other times they were so different that their personalities really stood out in their response. Okay, so I could go on and on with example and my fascination with their responses but I’m sure you all are not as fascinated as I am.  Anyway, ‘thank you, thank you’ for this fun challenge. It was a real joy to work with them all month.

Whoops just posted a comment that ‘melted away” I too wanted to thank Andrea and Ina for this delightful month. My team-mates were very serious about this challenge. It was heartening to receive a phone call from a not quite 8 year old and a 10 year old (from their vacation back to the home state they have just moved from) to ask me for the prompts so they could generate words. I did manage to get our poems up on our thread in order – although I could not get all the pictures there – they do appear throughout the thread and of course at our blog – which was another wonderful side-note to this month. Thank you for the opportunity to create, to read and to share together. 🙂

Hi Pearl, Thank you so much – I have to say ALL the thanks should go to Andrea, though – she did all the work and set up the contest and everything – I just provided some by-the-side-technical-chops. It has been really fun to write these – I wish my family hadn’t gotten run over with illnesses so that we could have completed it. I’m hoping (Andrea this is a hint 😀 ) that we will do it again so Kash and I have another chance.

Thanks again for being such a great part of this experiment, and please thank your beautiful “Grands” for us too !